The scale of open warfare within the cabinet at present is unprecedented within my lifetime as I recall it. The dark, dying days of the Callghan government, the Westland affair, Thatcher's overthrow, John Major's shambles, and the coalition felt nothing like this. That Hammond and Rudd decided they could announce their positions whilst May is on holiday is the surest sign that she is indeed the lame duck prime minister I forecast she would be before she even reached office. What though are the consequences?
May survives for three reasons. The first is no Tory actually wants her job because whoever the incumbent the present prime minister is destined to be a disaster for history to recount, making Lord Notth and David Cameron look inspired by comparison.
Second, more surprisingly (perhaps) Labour really does have little idea how to oppose her, so divided is it on the same issues of Brexit.
Third, the decision can be deferred. This is the only current gain for the Tories from the June election. Because no-one has the desire for another election as yet and May chose to carry on many think the matter can be put off.
I suspect this fragile consensus will hold as yet despite the massive political in-fighting that is now apparent. The question is how long 'as yet' implies. My own instinct is it means until October. To put it another way, that means Tory party conference. However well stage managed this exercise in lauding the duly chosen 'dear leader' usually is I cannot see that veneer surviving the pressure this year. The Tory party fringe is going to be riven with open hostility. It is hard to see how that can be prevented from spilling over into public dissent. And from where the support for May will come in all this is very hard to imagine. It is very obviously absent already. In that case it will take quite extraordinarily thick skin for May to survive this.
It may also take ability beyond even the Tory instinct for power to keep the party intact as well. The Brexit hard line and Hammond pragmatic dealers seem so far apart that the chance of reconciliation appears remote in the extreme. If May cannot hold them together, whether she's herself a lame duck or not, leaves the prospect of unity around any other candidate very hard to imagine. Cameron's ultimate failure would be a split Tory party, something not known in modern history but for which the Corn Laws provide resonant precedent. I am not, of course, sure it will happen. But I certainly think it possible. And with it the government would fall.
But that's another blog.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
The tories are divided to an extent but there are more hard line brexit backing MPS and the not so hardline ones than there are MP’s that backed corbyn, ie was it not 90% of demanded him step down last year? Even I who is not totally behind corbyn (he does have some good policies though!) can see through the excuse that it was not cuz of policy but fitness to lead given they never gave him the chance. Even now are simply lost on how to undermine him. If that was not the case I imagine if 90% can say they have no confidence in him now 90% can say we have every confidence. But perhaps you can say im wrong and labour mps are now all behind him?
I admit I could not follow your logic
In a nut shell I was just stating labour is underneath the surface more divided than the tories. Ie more tories MPs backed brexit than labour MPS that backed corbyn for leader first time and far from accepting that 90% backed a call for him step aside..
The one thing I believe is much more feared by the hard brexiters than the more moderate elements in the Tory Party is the spectre of a Corbyn led government. I wonder how much that will force them to accept soft brexit rather than a Corbyn led er, something or other.
Something I have realised reading this post is that the longer the Tories hold back from reconciling their internal divisions the worse the Brexit might become and the worse things may become for Britain. Far from “negotiating the best possible deal”. Matthew Parris is right to start using the term “criminal incompetence”.
And thanks for these good, sometimes excellent posts
I’m amazed that this is not being spelt out in the media. Right-wing press doing a very good job at not joining the dots. Hammond/Rudd says this, Fox/Davis says complete opposite within hours. Zero consistency, coherence or leadership. Total breakdown of collective responsibility. Just chaos and confusion, but the press say nothing.
The Tories have often been in this position, but they’ve always regrouped. It’s the left that tends to fragment and start a new Party – usually one per century.
I suppose it comes down to this – the Tories don’t like humanity, but thrive on its weaknesses – the left love and believe in humanity, and fail because their view is too rose-coloured.
Although the new populism is making waves within the present tank of self-interests, I fear that we might see a few life-rafts leaving the ship, but the crew will stay with it, because it’s all they know. And they love power – which the left often feels it could do without.
You say that Labour don’t know how to oppose May and her party and to a certain extent this may be true. However, if Labour firmly nailed its colours to the mast then that would be just the rallying cry the tories need to be able to get behind their leader (who’ver that may be), and the right-wing press would have something solid to get behind. There would be another all out offensive on Labour by the media, which unfortunately still holds far too much sway in this country. My suspiscion is that this is a deliberate ploy by Labour while the tories implode and own their unsuitability to govern. I could of course be entirely wrong. It’s easy to speculate when you’re on the outside looking in.
@Claire, if you mean by ‘nailing colours to mast’ Labour supporting Ref2, I’m with you. But that’s not going to happen unless, to use another metaphor, the tide really turns against Brexit and the tories. And that is exactly why Corbyn has adopted the position he has. He is not PM and he does not need to make promises so far in advance.
But I do not agree with Richard that this government is going to fall any time soon. The tories like power too much to call another election which they are bound to lose. If there had been another week or so of campaigning – enough time for postal voters to hear the arguments – Labour would have won.
I am beginning to be persuaded that Brexit will not happen. If the election is called shortly after March 2019, the incoming Labour government may have a mandate to reapply for membership. But by then perhaps even the tories will understand the chaos which their Brexit has brought, do their own u-turn and hang on till 22 by which time they will hope that their reputation would have been sufficiently restored. (I don’t know how their tame media would wear that one though.)
Even though I voted Leave, I am unhappy that the referendum was totally undemocratic. I am sure that a Labour government, leftish or rightish, would never have called a referendum in order to support the status quo. If they had thought leaving was the best option, they would have had a well thought-out plan and supported leave. That would have been the honourable thing.
@Carol Wilcox it would apear that the BBC is already trying to create a straw man argument. They devised their own poll and ran the results all day yesterday suggesting people voted Labour because of their stance on Brexit. But in an earlier poll by Yougov just after GE17 Brexit was not the issue. People had voted and switched alliegence due to Labour’s manifesto as the poll made clear. If people had really thought that Brexit was their main issue then they had the opportunity to vote for the Lib-Dems who were very clearly offering a second ref on Brexit, and yet their numbers hardly moved. So, once again the Tory led, Tory owned BBC are trying to reframe the arguement and will be using it to claim Labour have U-turned on something they never said in the first place, just as they have been trying to do with the alleged ‘wipe out historic student debt’ U-turn rubbish.